


9,690 Years

by rants_skellington



Category: Saints Row
Genre: Implied bossgat only, Light Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-05-28 16:33:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6336313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rants_skellington/pseuds/rants_skellington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It was kind of insulting actually. It was three hundred and eighty-seven counts of 1st-degree murder, and then that one, single, attempted murder hanging on the end like an unfinished sentence. Sure he’d not killed people before when he’d been trying to, but they couldn’t pin any of those on him, so it made him look like he’d been somehow defeated in the middle of that last attempt. He wished he’d gone through with it. He’d said that, in court, in front of the judge, the jury, and the increasingly forlorn face of Legal Lee. He’d said it so Troy would hear, sitting in the courtroom and not ever once meeting his gaze throughout the entire circus of a legal battle."</p><p>Johnny Gat has been sent to prison for 387 counts of 1st degree murder, and one count of attempted murder. A slightly melancholy fic about not coping, meeting new people, and trying to live through 387 life sentences.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Three Kings

**Author's Note:**

> This fic runs on the assumption that the time between Saints Row 1 and 2 is roughly five years. Johnny tries to kill Troy maybe a year after the end of the first game. I wrote most of this fic at 1-5 am if that helps you understand why it is this way at all.

It was kind of insulting actually. It was three hundred and eighty-seven counts of 1st-degree murder, and then that one, single, _attempted_ murder hanging on the end like an unfinished sentence. Sure he’d _not_ killed people before when he’d been trying to, but they couldn’t pin any of those on him, so it made him look like he’d been somehow _defeated_ in the middle of that last attempt. He wished he’d gone through with it. He’d said that, in court, in front of the judge, the jury, and the increasingly forlorn face of Legal Lee. He’d said it so Troy would hear, sitting in the courtroom and not ever once meeting his gaze throughout the entire circus of a legal battle.

Half the witnesses were fake, or exaggerating, and the physical evidence was surprisingly slim, but none of that _mattered_. Because he was going to plead guilty on principle, and because even if he did get out of the 387 counts of successful murder, he was going to go down for that single count of attempted murder. There was absolutely no wiggle room there. He wouldn’t back down, Troy wouldn’t back down, they both had the stubbornness that defined the Saints. And regardless, there was no way in hell that any judge in their right mind was going to let _Johnny Gat_ slip through their fingers and go back on the streets. This was the kind of court case that made names.

And it did. It made one name. It made Troy Bradshaw, cop who’d stopped one of the most violent criminals in American history, a household name and hero of the city. They made a TV drama about him. He rose the ranks like he was the CEO’s son. Johnny made a lot of jokes about being glad he was able to help his friend’s career.

The court case stretched on for two years. There were just so _many_ people connected. It turns out when you murder almost four hundred people, there are a lot of people who have been waiting for an opportunity to put you down. And then there were the appeals, appeal after appeal, but it didn’t matter. There was nothing anyone could do. Johnny was going down for a thousand life sentences, and he was getting the chair. When the court case was over, and Johnny was finally shut up in Stilwater Penitentiary, everything died away so suddenly. You got used to the constant court dates, going back and forth to courts and meetings with lawyers, that when it was finally over it was hard to process. Everything seemed so quiet.

People in jail avoided him. Not the guards; the prisoners. They were afraid. As many big men there were wanting to prove themselves, he was labelled a psycho and no one wanted anything to do with him. Those that had sense were too scared to fight him, and those that didn’t ended up in the hospital. The guards, on the other hand, seemed determined to not leave him alone for a second. The handcuffs and the locked doors gave them an unfair advantage but Johnny nearly always managed to hold his own. He wasn’t going to give them an inch now, or ever.

He’d been in jail for months before he managed to have a single civil conversation with anyone, and it was with the damn Vice King on the bench next to him when he was just trying to lift weights. The man still had a VK crown tattoo on his shoulder, a tiny faded thing that was stuck on him like an embarrassingly outdated pop culture artefact. Johnny knew the man was watching him, but he stubbornly did not look for a good few moments, until he eventually, inevitably, made accidental eye contact and met the parameters needed in order to trigger a conversation.

“You’re Johnny Gat,” the man said. He was average height, had a certain blocky awkwardness to his face. Wore his hair in tight cornrows, and had an unfortunate moustache Johnny would have strongly recommended against, were he ever asked.

“No shit,” Johnny said. “And you’re a Vice King.”

“Ain’t any Vice Kings anymore, man,” the guy said. “They are long gone, thanks to you.”

Johnny lowered the barbell onto the hooks and released, sitting upright on the bench. The Vice King on the bench was already sitting upright, elbows on his knees, face calm and approachable. He didn’t look like he was there to restart a gang war, but Johnny couldn’t shake the tension in his shoulders.

“You got something you want to say?” Johnny said.

“Man, I just wanted to talk, not fight you,” the guy said.

“You sure? But if you wanna go you better put me in the damn hospital because –”

“Whoa! I am _not_ going to fight you!” The man held up his hands in a universal show of peace. “You’re in prison for what? Killing five hundred people?”

“Three hundred and eighty-seven.”

“Right, and those are just the ones they could pin on you. I’m not fucking crazy. The Saints and the VKs are both dead and gone, I’m not risking my neck and extending my prison sentence to fight for someone who fled the damn city and left me in jail.” The man offered Johnny his hand. “I’m Pierce Washington.”

Johnny looked at Pierce’s hand but didn’t take it, lying back down on the bench and flexing his fingers before taking hold of the barbell again. He was getting stronger, and he liked that. He had this picture in his head, himself as the perfect killing machine. In this fantasy he broke out and no one could stop him, and in this fantasy there were Saints waiting for him on the outside, to take the city back again. The latter half of this fantasy was even more unlikely than the former. The Saints had been gone for years, and he was the only one who still gave a shit.

“I can spot you,” Pierce offered.

“Yo, if I need someone to suck my dick, I’ll let you know,” Johnny said. “Right now how about just leave me the fuck alone?”

“You are not a friendly guy, are you?” Pierce said.

“I’m in prison.”

“We’re all in prison. Don’t gotta be rude.”

Pierce left him alone, for a few days. Johnny kept noticing him around the prison. There were a lot of former Vice Kings in there, former Rollerz too, Los Carnales as well. Some of them kept to their own, huddles of gang colours like there were gangs left to go back to. There was no purple. At first Johnny didn’t understand why, there had to be Saints in the prison. The answer came clear soon – no one wanted to be associated anymore. Calling yourself a Saint was making yourself a target to everyone left loyal to one of the gangs the Saints had destroyed. Some still called themselves Saints, told Johnny as much, but they didn’t want to be seen with him. He was alone.

Pierce didn’t really stick with the Vice Kings, or anyone else. He had no real enemies, drifting comfortably around the prison under everyone’s radar, and he had plenty of people who liked him enough to call him a friend. But he showed loyalty to nothing, which didn’t make sense to Johnny. He didn’t understand the idea of being able to break away like that, just leave things behind.

 

* * *

 

Johnny had an ex-Carnales on the ground by the throat, his other fist slamming into their face with force enough to cave in their cheekbones. There was a good sized circle of people around them whooping and cheering, thrilled for the opportunity to see that nights’ entertainment. The guards would break it up eventually, but they were in no rush to do so right now. It was fun watching Johnny fight for the same reason it was fun watching dogs fight. They all thought he was a new breed of wild animal.

Johnny was going to keep beating the shit out of the Carnales until someone else stopped him or the guy died, whichever came first. He had no intention of stopping, right up until the moment someone grabbed his shoulder and dragged him out of his happy place and back into the wet, grey yard of Stilwater Penitentiary.

“What the hell are you doing?” Pierce said.

“What the fuck does it look like?” Johnny said, spitting blood when he talked.

Pierce grabbed him by the shoulder and dragged him backwards off of the wildly thrashing Carnales, whose face was now a mass of featureless red pulp. People in the crowd booed when they lost their show, but no one stepped in to try and stop Pierce when he nearly threw Johnny to the ground. Johnny leapt to his feet, shoving Pierce away from him. He was still raring for a fight, the adrenaline roaring in his veins like gasoline to a fire. He shoved Pierce again, the smaller man stumbling back and nearly falling into some of the disappointed audience.

“I’m not trying to _fight_ you!” Pierce said.

“What the fuck do you want from me then?” Johnny said. He had never been one for yelling – he got his point across without having to raise his voice – but he was worked up enough that he was finding it hard to manage his volume, temper ballooning wildly out of control.

“Calm the hell down,” Pierce said. “I am not your enemy.”

“What _are_ you then?”

“Is that the only option? I was hoping we could be friends.”

 

* * *

 

Pierce had grown up in Sunnyvale Gardens. He had joined the Vice Kings because he thought he could have a future in it, more than he could doing any of the crappy minimum wage work he managed to find. He’d had a criminal record before he’d left school, it was hard to find any kind of gainful employment. He wasn’t aligned with the VKs anymore because he liked to stay on the ‘winning team’, and there were no winning teams in prison, apparently.

“It was bullshit anyway,” he said. “No upwards mobility. Everyone on the top worked for Kingdom Come, and if you didn’t have a job there? You weren’t getting anywhere near King.”

Johnny mumbled something in agreement, leaning his head back to try and stem the flow of blood from his nose. He’d gotten an elbow to the face that morning in the line to get food, a not-accident he would have flown off the handle about if Pierce hadn’t been there to make disapproving noises behind him. He’d been fighting a lot less the few weeks he’d started hanging out with Pierce. He didn’t like it.

“And that was the real annoying shit y’know?” Pierce continued. “Half the reason I joined was to further my music career. I couldn’t do _that_ if I couldn’t get seen by King or Warren.”

“Your _music_ career,” Johnny said, voice muffled by the hand holding his nose.

“Yeah,” Pierce said. “I’m a singer. Old school R&B.”

“No shit?”

“I’m good.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Pierce snorted, but didn’t fire back with any cheap insults, even though Johnny kind of expected it. At least the blood had slowed down. Johnny tilted his head forward again, looking at the basketball game going on in the yard. He never joined in. He used to play a fair bit of basketball, a few years back. A few of the guys now might have even found it cool, playing b-ball with _the_ Johnny Gat, but he didn’t have it in him.

“I’ve talked to a few Saints,” Pierce said. “A lot of ‘em talk about it being like, really _noble_. Protecting the neighbourhood when no one else would.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said. “Some of the crew felt like that.”

That’s what Julius had wanted. A vigilante squad in purple flags, there to protect the people of Stilwater from the _really_ evil gangs tearing the place apart.

“Not you?”

“I just joined to kill people.”

 

* * *

 

The next punch smashed into Johnny’s guts, hitting him hard enough to knock the wind out of him. Johnny lurched backwards, was ready to recover and throw another punch, when the baton came down and cracked him across the back of the skull. He fell to the floor, hitting the tiles with a thud that jolted pain through his bones. He was still breathless, wheezing, when the other guard kicked him in the head and sent stars ricocheting around his mind.

Johnny tried to lever himself off up the ground, grabbing hold of the first guard’s leg and dragging himself upwards to his knees. The other guard reacted with a kick to the ribs, but Johnny took it and rolled through it, too blind with anger to get taken down now. He pulled the first guard to the ground, punched him in the throat as many times as he could before the second guy was hauling him off again.

“You wanna try?” Johnny said. “You wanna fucking have a go at me? You better fucking hospitalise me this time. Better put me in a Goddamn coma.”

Next hit was to his ribs again. Eventually they left him sitting on the floor of his cell, bruised up his whole front, aching as bad as he had after Anthony had gotten his hands on him. Johnny laughed bitterly at the memory, even though the laughter made his stomach hurt.

 _It only hurts when I laugh_ , he thought, and wished that was the case. He’d never been much of a belly-laugh kind of guy. It would be a breeze if all he had to do was repress the occasional chuckle.

“Man, what the fuck happened to you?”

Johnny looked up at Pierce standing outside his cell. He grinned at Pierce, showing off the blood on his teeth and Pierce winced, looking away.

“That shit’s nasty,” he said. “You need to get a hold of yourself. You’re fighting all the time.”

“And you never do,” Johnny said. “Pussy.” He coughed, his body wracking with pain when he did so, but he just shuddered and pretended it wasn’t happening.

“If I stay on my best damn behaviour, then I only have a year and a half left,” Pierce said. “I am not extending my sentence for some stupid prison fight. It ain’t worth it. You need to think more about your behaviour in here.”

“I back down from a fight, and I’m going to look like a coward,” Johnny said. “I’m the only rep the Saints has left. I’m not letting them down.”

“You’re the only Saint left,” Pierce said. “Worry about letting down your damn self.”

“No,” Johnny said. “I’m not.”

 

* * *

 

It had been six months and the guards hadn’t touched Johnny in weeks. It had been a peaceful few weeks. He hated it. He didn’t fucking understand why it had happened. For the entire six months he’d been in jail he couldn’t get them off him and now, for the last couple of weeks, no one had lain a finger on him. Sitting with Pierce in the mess hall, he looked around the room at the people who wouldn’t speak to him and guards who wouldn’t look at him, and had to wonder.

“They ain’t been near me in weeks,” he said.

“Scared of you I guess,” Pierce said.

“If they were scared of me, they never would have come for me in the first place,” Johnny said, scraping the last mouthful of tasteless meatloaf off the tray. He’d been having recurring dreams about the samgyetang his mother made when he was a kid. He’d have killed for that, or just some decent fried chicken. The chance to go back to Freckle Bitch’s one last time.

Even if someone smuggled a burger into him, it wouldn’t be the same. It would never be the same as sitting back in the car, rolling through the drive-thru, the summer sun above you as you ordered as many ice teas as you thought everyone could hold. Jesus, he missed summer heat and cheap ice tea. He missed driving, or just sitting in the car, listening to the radio as someone else drove and he did all the talking. What the fuck had happened to his car, now? His poor fucking car.

“Maybe they learned their fuckin’ lesson at last,” Pierce said. He was shivering in his ugly orange jumpsuit, not that he was going to admit to it. They’d turned the heating on the 1st of December, but it wasn’t enough, and the cavernous halls of Stilwater Pen were still frozen through.

“I bet it’s because Bradshaw made Chief.”

Pierce and Johnny both turned to look at the girl on the table behind them. Johnny had no idea who she was, a skinny white chick with scruffy dreadlocks and big green eyes. Stilwater Penitentiary was too small to keep the male and female prisoners separated, so they didn’t really even try. On paper, the men and women were meant to have different meal times and different time slots in the yard, but no one had stuck to that since the prison was built. The rules here depended entirely on the moods of the guards.

“What the fuck?” Johnny said.

“You didn’t hear?” The girl said. “Troy Bradshaw got made Chief of Police. He’s the one who put you down, right?”

“That’s not how it happened,” Johnny said.

“You should tell me the real story then,” she said. “I’m Shaundi. I’m new.”

“What they get you for?” Pierce said.

“One year for possession. You?”

“Three years for assault,” Pierce said. “I got a year left.”

“Nice. We’ll be out at the same time. We can throw a party.”

“I didn’t think they actually arrested white people for possession.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

“You don’t get to make jokes like that. S’not funny.”

Johnny sat back and watched them argue and added up his life sentences. You got a life sentence – twenty-five years – for 1st degree murder, and he had 387 counts of 1st degree murder. He was half a year into a 9,675 year sentence. Oh shit, and that attempted murder. That was another fifteen. 9,690 years to go. He’d traded fifteen years for the right to not have the guards kill him in his cell. He wasn’t sure it was really worth it.

 

* * *

 

“If you drink that,” Pierce said, “you will die.”

“No you won’t!” Shaundi said. “It’s fine!”

The three of them looked at the bucket of pruno Shaundi had been brewing in her cell. It stank like draino, and looked like vomit. Johnny didn’t know what was in it, and he wasn’t going to ask. He was sure it would get him drunk alright, and he was also sure he would never sober up again, and that was if he didn’t fucking die from it. For once he was ready to admit Pierce might be right about something.

“That is not fine,” Pierce said. “That is poison. You drink that and you’ll wake up in the fucking hospital wing.”

“I’ll try it,” Johnny said.

“No!”

Shaundi had been talking about perfecting her moonshine recipe from the last time she got sent down the whole three months she’d been inside. Now was the first time she had declared it ready to be drunk. Johnny and Pierce weren’t really convinced. For a start, it smelt like something Johnny would clean toilets with, and it looked like the crap Johnny was trying to clean off the hypothetical toilet in the first place. But he hadn’t had a drink in nine months, and you would be surprised what prison boredom did to a man.

It was almost unbelievable that his was the first real stay in prison Johnny had gotten. He’d been in a couple of times before, both for less than a year. The idea of living through the full 9,690 years – or 9,689 years and three months – he had left without a single drink was gut-wrenchingly awful. Aisha was visiting next week, but she wasn’t going to smuggle him so much as a Freckle Bitch’s burger, let alone a 40 oz. He hated her seeing him here.

“Look, the idea isn’t that we _drink_ it,” Shaundi said.

“Fuck that,” Johnny said, “I wanna get drunk.”

“Slow down Johnny, we _can_ get drunk,” Shaundi said, quick to pour oil on troubled waters. “But I’m making it so I can _sell_ it.”

Pierce looked flabbergasted. Johnny laughed.

“No one will buy this,” Pierce said.

“They will if Johnny threatens them into it,” Shaundi said.

“Alright,” Johnny said.

“What?” Pierce said. “Man, you’re up for appeal in what, a year?”

“Year and like four, five months.”

“Right. So why you wanna fuck that up with all this bad behaviour? All this drinkin’ and fighting shit?”

“There’s no way I’m getting out of prison,” Johnny said. “Even if I become a fucking choir boy.”

“You might get off death row.”

“Pierce!” Shaundi said.

Neither of them had said the words death row since they’d met Johnny. It had gone unsaid, a silent and uncommented thing passing them by. Both Pierce and Shaundi knew that at some point during their friendship, Johnny was going to die. They’d entered this friendship with the understanding it was temporary, even more so than any prison relationship. None of them – including Johnny – had any clue when his number would be up. It could be years. But Shaundi and Pierce were certain in the understanding that one day, they would lose their friend, and there was nothing they could do about it. They were prepared.

Johnny hadn’t really come to this level of acceptance.

“John, I’m sorry...” Pierce said.

“ _You_ call me Johnny,” Johnny said. “And you,” he said to Shaundi, “give me some of that pruno.”

Shaundi smiled in a way that suggested she was smiling because she couldn’t bring herself to say or do anything else. She grabbed a plastic cup she’d requisitioned from the mess hall and filled itself with the putrid smelling shit in the tub. She’d been so sure of herself a minute ago, but now she looked a little cautious about handing it to Johnny. Not so gung-ho when one of her own was possibly going to vomit out their own internal organs. Johnny took the cup and looked Pierce square in the eye as he threw it back and drank the whole shot in one go.

The pruno kicked like some kind of cybernetically enhanced mule developed to fight crime. Johnny was pretty sure he went temporarily blind. He coughed like he was thirteen again, and it was his first time drinking stolen tequila in his best friend’s garage, the alcohol knocking one of his remaining nine lives right out of him. Shaundi couldn’t stop herself from laughing as Johnny doubled up, clutching at his throat.

“Holy fuck!” He said.

“What did I say?” Pierce said, scornfully.

“Nuh-uh,” Shaundi said. “You next.”

“No fucking way,” Pierce said.

“Oh yeah,” Johnny wheezed. “Give him a cup, Shaundi.”

Shaundi took the cup from Johnny and filled it up again, offering it to Pierce. Pierce backed up to the wall of Shaundi’s cell, like he thought he’d be able to sidle out of the room. He ended up just meeting the wall and having no further to back, Shaundi still advancing on him with the offered cup.

“I think I hear a guard coming,” he said.

“Drink!” Johnny said through coughs, slapping Pierce on the shoulder and then having to hold onto him a little as his head began to swim. He wasn’t sure Shaundi hadn’t handed him pure ethanol.

Pierce took the cup, holding it in his hands like the longer he held it the more chance there was of it spontaneously turning into a cup of Rutherford beer, like Pierce was some kind of prison Jesus. The cup stayed 100% pure garbage. Eventually he took a deep breath and chugged the cupful.

“Fuck!” He said, falling back against the wall. He tried to breathe, dry-heaving like a cat retching before a hairball. “That is fuckin’ nasty!”

“Maybe the recipe isn’t perfect yet,” Shaundi said.

“You said you’d finally gotten it perfect,” Pierce said.

“I wasn’t going to know that until someone drank it,” Shaundi said.

“So we were your first test subjects?!”

Shaundi smiled and shrugged. Johnny couldn’t stop himself from laughing, despite the fact his throat felt like someone had taken a belt sander to it. He didn’t give a shit if the pruno did kill him.

 

* * *

 

“Of course… I wanna buy some…” The kid with the Rollerz tattoos and the eyes full of sweat said. “Only 20% chance of blindness you said?”

Johnny let go of the front of his shirt and redirected the shaking little snotrag to go and deal with Shaundi, who was reclining on the bed of her cell and looking for all the world like queen of Stilwater Pen. She’d be out in another six months, as long as they didn’t catch on to her little operation, but in the six months she’d been there, she’d established herself a nice little business. Johnny was getting his cut, but he didn’t really know what he was going to do with the money. He was flat fucking broke, but the cents and dollars he scraped away in prison counted for nothing but cigarettes he could trade for.

Johnny stayed sat outside Shaundi’s cell, leaning his head back on the bars. He liked standing guard like this. Made him feel like he was part of something again. A year into his sentence – only 9,689 left to go – he was been missing the Saints more than ever. In his dreams, he was surrounded by purple; they sat in a drafty church, and listened to speeches that filled them with bloodthirst and pride in equal measures. When he woke up, he could never remember what the speeches had been. He didn’t have the conscious imagination for that kind of thing.

Pierce disapproved of their operation, but that hadn’t stopped him from spreading the word. He’d talked it up enough for them to get customers even without Johnny cracking skulls. It amazed Johnny that no one in the Vice Kings had seen Pierce’s potential. He felt sure that if Pierce and Shaundi had been Saints, back in the day, then they both would have gotten more respect. They were good at what they did, and Julius would have seen that. He’d mentioned this before, but neither of them had had much reaction to it. Maybe they hadn’t really understood.

“Hey,” said a kid Johnny didn’t know. “You’re Johnny Gat, right?”

Johnny looked at the guy. He was young, a little baby-faced, and pale under his ill-fitted jumpsuit and purple cap. Johnny hadn’t seen him around before, but it was impossible to keep track of everyone in the prison.

“Last time I checked,” Johnny said. “Fuck are you?”

“My brother was in the Saints,” the kid said. “He died.”

Johnny blinked. There was no blame in the stranger’s face, instead just a kind of fervent attentiveness that disturbed Johnny somehow. The guy looked like he was meeting one of his heroes, but had nothing to say but misery, and it was so rawly personal that Johnny was horrified.

“They say most people wake up from comas in two to four weeks,” he said. “I know it’s been like four years, but I still think there’s a chance –”

“Shut the fuck up,” Johnny said, anger rising in him then faster than the rush of drinking Shaundi’s pruno. “You ever speak to me again, and I will fucking _kill_ you, understand?”

“Yeah, yeah,” the guy said, heavy-lidded eyes widening. “I’m sorry.”

He hadn’t meant anything wrong, but it didn’t matter what he _meant_. He’d stepped over the fucking line and he’d screwed up big time, thinking he could just come up to Johnny fucking Gat and talk shit however he wanted. Who the fuck did he think he was? Johnny was advancing on the kid without even realising it, even as the guy tried to back off.

“Johnny,” Shaundi called from her cell. “What are you doing?”

“Get the fuck out of here,” Johnny said, backing down just enough to let the stranger turn tail and run back into the maze of cell blocks that was their shared world.

 

* * *

 

It hadn’t taken much to pick a fight with the new Brotherhood asshole who walked into Stilwater Pen. Johnny didn’t even know what the fucking Brotherhood were, other than the people who’d inherited red from Los Carnales. The guy had come right up to Johnny talking shit about being a has-been and not knowing when to just die, so there was no way Johnny wasn’t going to fight him for it. He punched that motherfucker right in the head and shattered his nose in one blow. It was the first time he’d been able to get into a fight for weeks, and once it got going everything was alright, just fine for that glorious few moments when Johnny got to fucking whale on some sucker who had asked for it.

Jesus he loved to fight. He fucking loved to fight, and he loved to kill people even more. He was a human-shaped murder-machine and that was all he wanted to be; not the guy who lay awake at night, and thought about how many hours there were in 9,690 years, and what it would be like to live every one of those hours the way he was living now. Not the guy who hadn’t seen his girlfriend in weeks and didn’t _want_ to see her anymore, because he couldn’t bear sitting in front of her like this. Not the guy who was penned in by walls and water because of hesitating to pull the fucking trigger a second too long. He didn’t want to be any of those people. He wanted to hold a gun in his hands, and drive a car down the highway, and eat a burger, and kiss his girlfriend, and see his best friend, and go back to four years ago when he actually thought everything was going to be okay, because he’d been a dumb fucking kid who hadn’t known any better, somehow.

The guards tore them apart, the Brotherhood tough actually in tears by the time they managed to drag Johnny off him. They were going to put Johnny back in solitary, not for the first time, and not for the last. They had been talking about keeping him there, but Bradshaw – fucking _Bradshaw_ – wouldn’t allow it, that piece of shit, he was still trying to be involved. Johnny wished Troy would come to the jail so he could personally tell him to get fucked. He didn’t need help from Troy or from anybody. He’d handle his own shit.

“I need to go to the hospital wing,” he said.

“You always say that,” one of the guards said. “You hear about the boy who cried broken ribs?”

“You hear about the guard who got his teeth kicked in?” Johnny said. “Take me to the hospital.”

“Not a chance. You got a nice long stretch in solitary waiting for you.”

“I’m spitting up blood!”

“That’s from where you headbutted Fredrickson.”

They pulled Johnny along like they were guiding a reluctant dog, and he spent three days in solitary.

 

“I’ve got six months left,” Pierce said. “I am not risking fucking that up just for the chance to punch you in the face.”

“Just do it,” Johnny said, still standing with his fists up like a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robot. 

“Why the fuck do you want to go hospital so damn bad?” Pierce said.

“I don’t,” Johnny said. “If I go to hospital I’m gonna look pathetic.”

“Then why do you always ask about it?” Pierce said. “Every time you get in a fight you’re like ‘better put me in the hospital’.”

“Ah, shut up Pierce,” Johnny said.

“I’ll fight you,” Shaundi said. She jumped up off the ground, stood in front of Johnny with her fists up. She just about came up to his shoulder.

“Alright,” Johnny said. He resumed the boxing pose, shifting back and forth from one foot to the other. Shaundi bounced on the spot, clapped her fists together like she was warming up for the first punch.

“C’mon pretty boy,” she said. “Show me what you got.”

Johnny punched in slow-mo, fist moving achingly slowly through the air before coming to a gentle halt on Shaundi’s cheek. She mimed taking a real hit, falling in slow motion to the side in exaggerated fright. Pierce stared at them both, looking once again, like he’d been robbed of the chance to have his big Oscar-winning monologue. Johnny didn’t really know what Pierce wanted from him, in the long run. It was an odd kind of friendship.

“Fine, whatever,” Pierce said. “All I’m asking is for someone to take this shit seriously.”

“Why?” Shaundi said. “We’re out in six months, Johnny has his appeal then. We can’t do anything except try not to go crazy and make a little money on the side.”

“I’m never getting out of here,” Johnny said. “Who gives a shit what I do?”

He threw another slow-motion punch at Shaundi, but she didn’t react when his fist tapped her shoulder. She just looked fucking sad. They both did, his new-found friends, looked like they’d just seen a puppy tell them it understood the concept of death. He stood back, standing in the awkward silence for as long as he could bear it.

“I had a friend,” Johnny said. “Best friend. In the Saints. They’re in the hospital wing here.”

“For how long?” Shaundi said. “I’ve never seen them.”

“Four years now,” Johnny said. “They’re in a coma.”

“Jesus, Johnny.”

“I’m sorry, Johnny.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Johnny said. “Unless I get in that hospital wing, I’m never gonna see them again.”

Pierce and Shaundi froze then. They looked at each other, then weighed up the situation. Johnny couldn’t even try to read them well enough to know what they were thinking, but there seemed to be a consensus reached.

“So you want to get the shit beaten out of you, but you don’t want to look like a loser who lost a fight to someone in a different gang?” Shaundi said.

“No,” Johnny said. “Whatever. I never get hurt bad enough to get put in the hospital. I’d need to get knocked the fuck out. Or shanked.”

“We’re not shanking you,” Shaundi said. “That’s crazy.”

“We could knock you out with one of the weights,” Pierce said.

“What about you don’t break my skull open?” Johnny said. “Are you actually doing this? What about your good behaviour?”

“Fuck it,” Shaundi said.

“You realise I’m not going to be able to go down without fighting back,” Johnny said.

“Yeah,” Pierce said, looking like he understood he had sunk too far into the quicksand to pull himself out now. “Fuck it. Can’t let the Saints down.”

 

* * *

 

The hospital wing lights were unbearably bright against Johnny’s delicate swollen eyes. He could barely see where he was going when the guard shoved him into the hospital wing and left him floundering until the doctor steered him to one of the beds. One of his eyes was swollen shut and the other was covered in his own blood. Shaundi had mentioned head wounds bled the most and Johnny had thought a good face full of blood would definitely get him into the hospital wing, so now he had a six inch gash disfiguring his face. It would definitely need stitches.

Pierce was on the other bed, groaning softly to himself. Johnny didn’t know if it was authentic or for effect. He’d really done a number on him. He probably should have backed off a little at some point, but he wasn’t any good at going easy. Pierce would be alright, probably. Johnny was wondering about how soon he’d be able to walk unaided. His head was still swimming, the world that he could see taking on a worryingly fuzzy edge. He hadn’t anticipated being hit in the head with his own broken glasses, but kudos to Pierce for coming up with that on the fly. It had given him the head wound he wanted.

Johnny lay on the bed and let the nurse stitch up his cuts and wash blood out of his eyes. He couldn’t move without his brain violently lurching around his side his skull, but he’d spotted the closed curtains at the end of the ward. Above the sound of Pierce’s increasingly theatrical moans, he could hear the sound of an oxygen machine, the wheezing rasp of the aided breath. He made no attempt to get up, waiting for the nurse to finish her duties, but he couldn’t move his eyes away from the curtain, staying stock still on the bed with eyes fixed and his heart beating slow as water through a frozen river.

They left him alone eventually, for a moment. They had to turn their attentions to Pierce. Johnny waited half a second before he swung his legs over the side of the bed, pulling himself up. He couldn’t stand up properly, his legs shaking and muscles aching too much to let him stand unaided. He leaned on the bed next to his instead, making his way across the ward floor as quickly as he was able. The closer he got to the curtain, the more clearly he could hear the breathing machine, the more he felt nothing at all. When he was standing right next to it, he could barely bring himself to push the curtain aside. That one tiny motion weighed so much then, lifting his arm to pull the curtain and show himself the friend he had been missing so badly.

He had been missing them. He had barely thought about them in four years, because they were in everything he did. On his mind like an understanding, they occupied his thoughts as much as breathing and sweating and blinking did. It wasn’t something he ever had to think about, because he knew. They were there. They were both mere feet and 9,690 years away from him.

Johnny pulled the curtain aside and looked down on Playa’s comatose face. Not that he would know, but the bandages from their last skin graft had just been removed a couple of days ago, and they lay in their new skin, sickly yellow and shiny under the unbearable lights. When they breathed, their chest moved with the oxygen machine, face half hidden under the plastic mask covering it. Their hair was growing back in, black in a way that was both natural and in no way what Johnny thought of being natural for _them_. Their eyes were closed. The whole time he’d known them, he’d barely ever seen them sleep, and seeing them so still now looked wrong.

But they didn’t look dead. He’d been expecting them to look dead.

They were alive.

“You look like fucking burnt toast,” he said, borderline incoherent. “Who gets blown up on a boat? Who does that happen to? You fuckin’ idiot.”

He wanted to touch them, because he wasn’t convinced they were real, but at the same time he couldn’t bring himself to. He’d never been a person who needed to touch, to feel or hold his friends, but he couldn’t make some part of his brain understand that this was the real Playa. That yes, the real Playa was capable of sleeping, and they were capable of being so fragile. That they could be a vulnerable body in a bed.

But at the same time, it wasn’t them at all.

He took their hand in his, and didn’t think about how this was the first time he had ever really held their hand. The last time their hands had touched was when they’d been saving him from fucking Anthony, and that had been a long, long time ago. A whole life time ago. 9,690 years ago.

“You remember that? When I got fucking kidnapped?” He said. “You saved my skin. As usual.”

They breathed. Their heart was beating, and their eyes twitched in far-away dreams.

“You were the real leader of the Saints,” he said. “You did everything.”

 _Hssshhh-siiiggghhh,_ the breathing machine wheezed.

“I found two new Saints,” he said. “Canonized ‘em and everything. They’ll be there, when you wake up.”

They would wake up. He knew this, because it had to be true. Because he didn’t want to believe he would be leaving the world with no Saints at all. Playa would wake up, and they would fix things, whether he was there or not.

“You’re going to freak out when you wake up,” he said. “You won’t believe what Ultor’s done with the place.”

 _Hhhsssshhh-siiiiigh_.

“Gat. Gat, step away from the patient.”

“Yeah, yeah, in a minute.” Johnny wiped blood off his eye again. “It’d be really good if you could wake up before I get the chair. We can break out together. Not Pierce and Shaundi, because they’re getting out soon and I don’t wanna mess that up for them. But us two, we’ll get out of this place together. Soon as you wake up.”

 _Hsssshhhh-siiiiiigh_.

“Yeah, I get it.”

“Gat, step away from that patient _immediately_.”

“Yo, I’m trying to have a conversation here,” Johnny shot the guard what he was sure was a hard look and then turned back to Playa. “I understand if you don’t wake up that soon. You do what’s right. You’ll be up when you need to be. You’re the one in charge.”

 _Hhhhssshhhh-siiiiiiigh_.

“I might die. But it’s fine, someone’s gotta be the martyr around here. Eesh’ll kill me, but whatever. I’ll catch you next time.”

He let go of Playa’s hand and stepped away from the bed before the guard tazed him. The curtain fell shut behind him and Playa was taken from view, nothing left but the sound of them breathing. But as long as they lived, Johnny could carry on. It was going to be alright. He walked back to his own bed, guided none too gently by the guard so he didn’t fall and break his own neck on the floor.

Johnny sat back on the bed, smiled at Pierce lying on the bed opposite. His bones were aching, but he felt fine. He looked at Pierce, then back at the long white curtain. He had not stopped smiling.

“It’s alright,” Johnny said to everyone, including himself. “It’s going to be okay.”


	2. Always A Saint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Johnny gets a visit, flashbacks ensue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This started off as me wanting to write what was essentially a "deleted scene" from 9,690 Years, a kind of left-over piece I never wrote. But it expanded out from there. It takes place some time between the scene with Carlos and the final piece of the last chapter. It's tonally and stylistically quite different, but there you have it. It might still be worth reading.

He was lying in bed, in Aisha’s bed, in her apartment. In the dark he could barely make anything out, the room draped in layers of shadows that obscured everything around him, but he instinctively knew where everything was regardless. The old wood dresser with the fuzzy CRT TV on top, the one that barely got a signal and loved to play static, sat against the wall, under a glossy mirror that only reflected back the darkness of the room. The mostly matching end tables on either side of the bed, with the lamps she loved so much, the ones she’d gotten from her grandmother. The old teddy bears sitting in a row on the shelf on the wall, with a framed photo of them. She never let them get dusty, and even if he made fun, he would never push it too far, because he knew she still loved those old things. He always liked that there was a photo of the two them up there with the things she still loved so much. It was a comforting thought, that the photo stayed, that she hadn’t just thrown it away one day and never would. But he couldn’t roll over to look up the photo. He remained pinned to his side, staring out through the window and into the night.

He was lying on top of the bedsheets, Aisha’s favourite red comforter cold underneath him. He didn’t know where Aisha was, but she wasn’t there, and the bed was frozen to the touch. He wanted to find her, but he couldn’t move. He could only stare out of the window, out over the open lake that surrounded Stilwater. The cityscape outside the window was black, a vignette on the edge of his vision, fading out around the brightness of the lake. In the moonlight, the water seemed to glow, the light shining off grey water so brilliantly that it almost hurt to look. But he _couldn’t_ look away, his eyes fixed on the shining waters, unable to even blink. His body was rigid, as though he had become stone, scarcely able to summon up the effort to breathe. Was he breathing? He didn’t know.

Out in the lake sat a boat. A huge white yacht, colossal, floating like an iceberg in the black water. The moon sat directly behind the boat, and yet it only made the boat brighter, and turned everything around it into silhouette. His eyes were locked onto this yacht now, and he could see someone standing on the deck. Just one figure, tall and dangerously thin, a waif in an oversized jacket. They were turned towards him, but their eyes were downcast, facing the open water. He realised, the horror and terror seeping through him like poison in his veins, that they _didn’t know_. They didn’t know what was going to happen.

He tried to move, desperately tried to push himself up off the bed, so that he could race to the window. Surely if he could just open the window and call out, they would hear him. All he had to do was _warn them_.

But he couldn’t move. He was frozen in place, limbs rigid against the bed. He was so strong, but that didn’t count for anything now, because he was _useless_ , trapped by _himself_ and confined by his own failure. He was the only one who could save them, but he _couldn’t_ save them. The fear and the anger were pounding inside him, like the scream of adrenaline during a fight, he had to run, he had to do something. Oh God, he had to do something! His insides were burning up, fire catching deep inside him and scarring out the inside of his living corpse. But his outside was so cold, the ice water he was held in kept the fire inside him from spreading, and all the flames could do was feast on his own insides.

On the boat, they looked up at him. He locked eyes with them, his brown on their grey, a colour as murky as the waters they were both surrounded by. He wanted to say anything, but there was nothing to say. He couldn’t save them, and he couldn’t tell them the truth. The water held him back, crushed him down and kept him confined, but his own fire didn’t help. For better or for worse, his fear and his anger made him untouchable.

They stood on the boat, and neither of them spoke, and when the explosion tore through the boat and the fire and shockwaves shook through the city, his own fire burned him up from the inside out.

* * *

 Johnny woke up and realised he’d been drooling on the sheets. He grunted with displeasure, lifting his head off the bed, and wiping his own spit off his face. He was aching, muscles complaining about the cramped confines of his shitty prison cot. His knee – the bad one – was cramping too, damaged nerves and muscles twisted and throbbing. He sat up, swinging his legs off the side of the bed and trying to stretch his arms out, work some of the pain out of his shoulders. Jeeze, it would be nice to sleep on something other than a block of lead. That wasn’t really an option, though, so he gave up on the whining before he even really started and just got up.

He needed to shave, but it was hard to really give a shit. He could feel the rasp of stubble when he rubbed a hand over his face, but it was hard to imagine who was going to judge him over that now. Pierce? Shaundi? They were in fucking _prison_. He wondered if Shaundi had brewed up a new batch of pruno. He wondered if Pierce was going to try and out-lift that one guy in the yard that day. He wanted a shower pretty badly, it was another icy cold winter day, but he felt like he was covered in a sheen of dried sweat and it was pretty uncomfortable.

He was still idling by the bed when one of the guards rattled at the front of his cell, dragging a truncheon across the bars like a kid dragging a stick over a fence as they ran by. He looked at them, lip already curled into a snarl, ready to start firing back defensive insults and threats if the little man in the costume tried him. But the guard didn’t look like he was going to start shit, just looked Johnny in the eye like he realised Johnny was a human being, and deigned to speak to him.

“You’ve got a visitor, Gat,” he said.

“What?” Johnny said. He hadn’t been expecting Aisha. Shit, he looked like crap. What the hell was she going to think?

“Not up in the visitor’s room, down here,” the guard said

Johnny was going to respond, but he didn’t have a chance to, before the footsteps heading towards his cell stopped in front of him, and he looked at the unsmiling face of the man who’d put him away.

“Hi, Johnny,” Troy Bradshaw said.

* * *

  It was the warmest day of spring so far, the sky a clear and brilliant blue above the spires of the Saint’s Row church, and Johnny and Playa were sitting back on the roof of a car and relaxing for the first time in a short eternity. Parked in the tiny space beside the church, looking down on the tiny unkempt graveyard and tossing bottle caps at gravestones, they’d been there for maybe half an hour and were enjoying the day just fine. The car radio was tuned to 101.69 Sizzurp FM, they were sharing the last can of beer, and Johnny was just about to suggest strolling down to Brown Baggers when Troy stepped out of the church and caught sight of them.

“That’s my car,” he said, like he hadn’t decided if he was really pissed off yet or not.

“We know,” Johnny said, passing the can to Playa.

“Did one of you break into it?” Troy said.

“Playa did,” Johnny said. “We wanted to listen to the radio.”

Playa threw up the devil horns with their free hand and Troy gave them a reproachful look, but they just grinned and took another swig of beer before passing the can back to Johnny.

“You two are a danger to yourselves and others,” Troy said, leaning against the side of car next to Playa’s legs.

“If we weren’t, we’d be pretty useless,” Johnny said. He drained the last of the beer can and tossed it at one of the gravestones, the can hitting one and then bouncing off.

Troy snorted, pulling a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket and offering it to the others. They both took one, Playa and Johnny crowding over Troy’s lighter when he passed it to them, Johnny knocking against the brim of Playa’s stupid baseball cap when he pushed in too close. He flicked the brim away from him, Playa just giving him a look of haughty disapproval.

“How’s the leg?” Troy said.

“It’s alright,” Johnny said. He was still in a leg brace from foot to thigh, and he didn’t think it was going anywhere soon. It had been a struggle jumping up on the roof of the car, but he wasn’t going to tell anyone that.

“It’s hard to think the Vice Kings are actually gone,” Troy said. “No small thanks to you two.”

“We are pretty great,” Johnny said, grinning sideways at Playa. They nodded back, bumping fists with Johnny.

“All we got left now is Los Carnales,” Troy said. “And then what?”

“Then the Saints run this fucking place,” Johnny said.

“Yeah,” Troy said, sounding unconvinced. “What are we going to do with it?”

Johnny and Playa both shrugged. He didn’t know about Playa, but he knew he didn’t have any plans, and he wasn’t going to make any. Things were going well for him letting Julius call the shots. He knew, had heard down the grapevine, that Troy didn’t like all this. Didn’t like dealing drugs, didn’t like taking risks. It seemed weird to Johnny, that he would be so reserved about this. He’d been one of the first Saints. He should have been hungry to get what he deserved.

“Whatever Julius wants,” Johnny said, lightly. “Me and Playa are gonna go get some more drinks, you wanna come?”

“I can’t. I got somewhere to be,” Troy said. “Gonna need my car back.”

“Whatever,” Johnny said, jumping off the roof and ignoring the jolt of pain that went through his leg when he hit the ground. “Zircon’s a shitty ride anyway.”

“If you say so, Gat,” Troy said, smiling back in a way that to Johnny, looked somehow a little wrong. Like he was biting back on saying anything else.

* * *

 “What the fuck are you doing here?” Johnny said, staring at Troy through the bars.

He hadn’t seen Troy since the last trial, and the feeling inside him now was less than positive. The anger was cutting through the numbness that had been settling in his mind the past few months, but the rawness of the rage was so strong he couldn’t contain it, feeling his hands tremble like he was a scared child. Troy looked like he’d forgotten why he’d come in the first place, mouth open, but no words coming out.

“I wanted to see how you were,” he said, eventually.

“I’m in prison,” Johnny said.

“I know that,” Troy said.

“If I could,” Johnny said. “I would kill you right now.”

“I know that too.”

“We’re done talking. Get the fuck out of here.”

Johnny turned his back to Troy, because that was all that he could _do_ to get away, not even given the dignity of being able to walk away from an argument. He was literally backed up against a wall, and if Troy couldn’t see how dangerous a situation that was to be in, Johnny wasn’t going to accept any blame.

“Have you been to see Playa yet?” Troy said.

“I said we’re done talking!” Johnny said, his hands balling into fists so tight the scar on his knuckles split open again.

“They’re doing ok,” Troy said. “For a coma. They had another skin graft a couple of weeks back. It’s healing pretty good, the doctors say. None of them know what the point is, but y’know, it’s the city’s money, so whadda _I_ care.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Johnny said, snapping back around and coming up to face Troy so fast the guard flinched. Troy didn’t move. He just stood there and stared Johnny dead in the eye.

Troy had aged about ten years in the past four, eyes lined with sleepless nights and hair going grey at the temples. He’d slicked his hair back till it was neat, trimmed his goatee back to an acceptable moustache, but it made him look sleazy rather than respectable. He’d put on weight too, the uniform jacket fitting badly across his shoulders, like he couldn’t work up the effort to get one that fitted right.

“You look like shit,” Johnny said.

“So do you,” Troy said. He smiled, but Johnny didn’t smile back.

* * *

 It was raining, and Johnny was walking out of Stilwater Police Station into the storm with a smile on his face. He’d only been overnight, but that was enough. He didn’t even care that the rain was soaking through his T-shirt and leaving him wet through, he was just happy to be outside again. It wasn’t a long walk from the police station in Encanto back to Saint’s Row, even if it was pouring with rain. It would have been nice to have someone pick him up, but he didn’t exactly have a laundry list of people wanting to hang out with him these days. He hadn’t spoken to Aisha since she’d moved out of the Row.

He made it to Harrowgate, back in the Row, soaked to the skin and starting to lose the buzz that he got from freedom. The sky was still thunderously grey, and the rainfall had only increased since he’d started walking back, a distant rumble of thunder threatening the whole district. He was crawling the distance back to his place in Mission Beach when a car rolled to a stop beside him. The car was a Raycaster sports car, shiny pearlescent purple under the raindrops splattered across it. Johnny stopped walking, curiosity grabbed by the flash ride, and what they were doing stopping by him. His first assumption was it was some Downtown businessman trying to score drugs – they’d come to the wrong place, Johnny had no connections – but when the window rolled down, he was quickly proven wrong.

“Hey, Johnny,” Dex Jackson said. He looked fucking alien to Johnny inside a sports car like that – it was the kind of car Johnny would have boosted with his friends in high school to take on a joy ride. Or boosted right now, should the opportunity have presented itself.

“Dex?” Johnny said. “I haven’t seen you in fuckin’ forever.”

“What the hell you doing walking in this storm?” Dex said. “You want a ride?”

“Fuck yeah,” Johnny said, walking round to the passenger’s side and bundling in.

He was dripping on the leather seats, he realised, but he just thought that was kind of funny. Dex didn’t say anything, but that probably just meant Johnny had missed out on a passive-aggressive glare.

“What you up to?” Dex said.

“Just got out of the police station,” Johnny said. “Got held overnight for disorderly conduct or some shit.”

“You ain’t calmed down since high school, then,” Dex said.

“Fuck no.”

Dex was wearing a purple visor pulled down over his eyes, and a purple jacket. The monochromatic style was standing out to Johnny.

“Yo, what’s with all the purple?” He said.

“Flying my flags,” Dex said. “I’m with the Saints now.”

“Who the fuck?”

“The Third Street Saints.”

He smiled at Johnny, a little cocky almost, but Johnny just felt wary. There were plenty of gangs in Stilwater to go around, and he’d never been interested in any of them. He wasn’t interested in pushing drugs for some rich asshole he’d never meet, while he barely scraped enough to pay rent. He could fight motherfuckers without getting involved in the Vice King’s pyramid scheme entrapment bullshit.

“I’ve never heard of them,” Johnny said.

“Some people got sick of the way things have been around here,” Dex said. “Felt like it was time to maybe try and take back what’s ours. Clean up the Row.”

“Clean up the Row?”

“Yeah. This place is fucked up, man. Someone’s gotta do something about it.”

Johnny didn’t really recognise Dex’s new vigilante attitude, but he had a burgeoning new curiosity spiking inside him.

“I’m going to see others at the church right now,” Dex said. “You should come.”

“Yeah,” Johnny said, glancing out at the rain thundering down outside and deciding that he was probably better off staying in the car, for now. “Alright.”

* * *

 “I can get you a visit to see Playa, if you want,” Troy said.

“I don’t want your _help_ ,” Johnny spat.

“Well, you’re gonna get it,” Troy said. “Or otherwise most of the guards here will be jumping to kill you.”

“Who fucking cares?”

“Jesus, Johnny.”

* * *

 He’d woken up in shafts of sunlight coming through the cracks in Aisha’s blinds. It had been a good way to wake up, slowly coming too with the warm light bathed over his face. He clambered out of bed, stretching as he yawned, and then made his way out of the bedroom and into the living room. Aisha was sitting on the sofa, watching a TV news report. He stared at the screen, and then it clicked in his half-asleep brain that he was looking at images of Saint’s Row.

“What’s going on?” He said.

“Alderman Hughes’ yacht _exploded_ ,” Aisha said. “They’re saying everyone’s dead. They’re dragging bodies out of the lake.”

“Looks like the bastard got what he deserved,” Johnny said.

His mind slipped off it nearly immediately though, as he went on the far more important search for coffee and his pants. He’d gotten dressed, kissed Eesh goodbye, and then stepped out into _his_ city. Fuck, it felt so good to be able to think that and know it was true. It felt so good to know he could drive back into Saint’s Row and head to the church, and the whole city would be revolving around _them_. He tried to phone Playa, but they weren’t answering their cell for whatever reason. He figured they were busy. Taking a well-deserved rest, maybe.

His good mood didn’t waver when he got to the church and found it empty. He’d waited in his office for a while, and eventually heard what had to be Dex and Troy’s voices. He left his office, almost skipping over to them. They were mid-argument, but they were _always_ mid-argument, and the only strange part was how fast they cut it off when he walked out into the room. But hey, if it didn’t involve him, it didn’t involve him.

“Hey,” he said.

“Oh shit,” Troy said.

“What?” He said, his good mood coming to a screaming halt like it had run directly into a brick wall.

“No one told him,” Dex said, voice strained like this was a big inconvenience on the road to more important things.

“No one told me _what?_ ” Johnny said.

“Playa’s dead,” Dex said.

* * *

 “Johnny? Are you still watching that news report? You have to stop watching that thing.”

* * *

 He levelled the gun so he could see Troy through the sights. It was one millimetre more, and _Officer_ Bradshaw was going to have his head blown right off his shoulders. He just needed to pull that trigger. Any second now, pull the trigger.

Troy looked right at him, the glint of sniper’s glass on the roof. They locked eyes. He needed to pull the trigger.

* * *

 “No they’re not,” Troy said. “They’re in a coma.”

* * *

 When he leaves the hospital wing, the sound of Playa’s breathing machine will not stop playing in his mind. He will hear it there, like it is seeping through the walls of the prison, for weeks. He does not know then, that they will not need it for much longer. He will come to terms with the idea only one of them will be breathing any more.

* * *

 “C’mon, get on your feet, we all went through that.”

* * *

 Troy was standing close enough to Johnny’s cell that Johnny could have reached out and grabbed him if he wanted to, but he didn’t. They both stood on either side of the bars, separated by steel, and by the blue and orange they wore. The purple they had once worn was not enough to keep them together. Flying your flags was important, after all, you had to let everyone know who you were rolling with.

“I’m sorry,” Troy said.

“You could have stayed with the Saints,” Johnny said. “But you went back to the cops. None of us knew.”

“Hughes wanted the Saints gone,” Troy said. “Being a cop was the only way I could protect you.”

“We would have stopped Hughes,” Johnny said. “No one can step to the Saints.”

“Yeah, I believe you would have. You and Playa,” Troy said. “You’d have kicked his doors down and killed him yourself.”

“Who did kill him?”

Troy stopped short. It was a noticeable pause, a _prominent_ pause. The kind of pause where someone was thinking of what they wanted to say. And Johnny _knew_ Troy was a good liar. You had to be, to stay undercover for so long.

“Playa was trying to kill him,” Troy said. “And something went wrong with the explosives. That’s what the investigation team said.”

“You didn’t investigate?”

“No. I was too close to the case.”

Johnny didn’t know if he believed him. He didn’t know if he could believe anything Troy said to him. He’d never been a suspicious person before, but now everything Troy said felt worthless. This situation was irreparable, any friendship they’d had before was nothing now; it had melted away in the heat of Johnny’s anger and the only thing that was between them was miles of empty water. Suspended and frozen in the water, they were both too far from land to free themselves, and it was all they could do to keep themselves above the surface.

“They were my friend, too,” Troy said. “I wasn’t as close as you two but…”

“They’re still alive,” Johnny said.

“I know,” Troy said. “But they’re sure as hell not my friend anymore.”

“Maybe they’re more forgiving than I am.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it.”

Johnny actually managed to laugh, even though it wasn’t a joke, and it wasn’t really funny. He almost couldn’t believe he hadn’t shanked Troy yet. He told him as much.

“Thank you,” Troy said. “You do that and there’ll be one less Saint.”

You could have felt the mood change like a tangible wave. Johnny stepped back from the bars, widening the distance between him and Troy. Troy could feel the mistake too, the uneasy smile sliding off his face and something that Johnny could only recognise as painfully keen loneliness appearing in Troy’s eyes.

“The only Saints left are me and Playa,” Johnny said.

“Once a Saint…” Troy shrugged.

“Get the fuck out of here before I shank you,” Johnny said.

“I remember it going differently,” Troy said. “I’ll see you around, Johnny.”

“Yeah, not if I see you first.”

* * *

 “What’s up with Julius’ new boy?” Johnny said to Troy, walking into Julius’ office at the back of the church

Troy didn’t look up from the money he was counting up. Doing finances for the gang sounded like the most boring shit Johnny could conceivably imagine, but if Troy was doing it, that meant Johnny didn’t have to. And that was fine by Johnny.

“The weird mute kid?” Troy said. “You’d like them. They’re a complete psycho.”

“They really don’t talk?”

“Not a fuckin’ word.”

Johnny sat on the corner of Julius’ desk, next to Troy’s money piles and very deliberately pushed one stack of notes over so that it tumbled onto the ground. Troy looked up at him with such a strong lack of amusement it was like he’d never even heard of the concept of a joke. He did not stop looking at Johnny like that until Johnny pushed himself off the desk and began gathering fifties off the ground.

“Where the fuck is all this money coming from?” He said.

“Weird mute kid,” Troy said.

“In like two days?” Johnny said. “This is like five thousand bucks.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure they’re a fuckin’ robot,” Troy said. “Criminal fighting robot.”

He paused on that one, considered it, like it was a particularly poignant statement.

“I mean,” he clarified, “a robot that fights and does crime. Not a robot that fights crime.”

“The last thing we need is RoboCop fucking our shit up,” Johnny agreed.

“I’m just glad we’ve got you and the new guy on our side,” Troy said. “Two-man army. I don’t want to ever get on your wrong side.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm planning a third chapter of this, a kind of... round-off piece. It'll get posted whenever I next decide to spend seven continuous hours hunched over a keyboard writing so fast I strain both my wrists, because apparently that's the only way I can write this fic. Planning is for suckers.

**Author's Note:**

> The way Stilwater Prison is run is obviously completely unrealistic and nonsensical but its based on how the prison is in the game so I'm not accepting blame for that. 
> 
> The idea of Pierce being a Vice King is based on the what Arif S. Kinchen said in a livestream once, that he thought Pierce was in the Vice Kings in 1 and joined the Saints in 2 in order to be on the "winning team".
> 
> Shaundi and Johnny selling moonshine in the prison is taken from an [unused audio file I found in the game files and I loved the concept too much to not use it. ](http://saints-row-2.tumblr.com/post/141486527871/this-a-great-voice-clip-from-sr2-i-wish-theyd)
> 
> I hope you enjoyed it? This style was slightly experimental and I'm always worried about not using my ideas effectively. Let me know what you think, every little helps!


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